


Lifeline

by ndnickerson



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Series, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Gyson suggests a therapeutic exercise for Goren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifeline

"Hey. Bobby."

Her nervousness puts a lilt on the end of it, inflecting it like a question. Eames winces and tosses her head slightly, keeping the phone to her ear as her hair brushes her cheeks again. She keeps one elbow on the bar but she can't help scanning the room. Even during her off-hours it's hard to turn it off.

She hears a faint rustling, maybe the fabric of his shirt against a jacket. "What've we got?"

"It's—" she chuckles. "Not a call-out."

"Oh."

"Are you in the middle of something?"

"N—No. Not really. I think Shark Week will happen again next year."

She smiles. "The sharks generally make sure of it."

He walks into the bar fifteen minutes later. By then she has a vodka rocks in front of her and she's uncomfortably aware of the texture of her clothes, the weight of her hair, the weight of the lacquer on her fingernails.

He slides onto the stool next to hers, his lip quirking up at the sight of the highball glass in front of her. A lifetime ago they came here for margaritas after the worst cases. Around the time she'd been carrying Nathan it had stopped, and then there had been Tate and the aftermath and it's been too long since they've been able to relax over a few drinks, especially knowing they have an entire day to work through the hangover.

She isn't sure he gets hangovers anymore. She isn't sure what he looks like perfectly sober, well-rested, content. But Dr. Gyson is working on it.

The bartender puts his first drink in front of him and Bobby takes a small sip, replaces it in the cocktail napkin, turns it a little. The light catches the ice, trapped in amber.

"So, what brings a gorgeous woman like you to a place like this."

He glances up at her at the end of it, a quick nervous flick of his eyes, even though he's smiling. She lets out a small bark of laughter than she blames entirely on the alcohol.

"A broken date."

He nods.

"Lorraine and I were supposed to have dinner, but her kid got sick." Eames shrugs a little and takes another sip, and it burns. "And what brings a handsome man like you, here?"

"The hope that I'd run into someone half as gorgeous as you."

They haven't played married or relationship in a long time. Playing married requires a certain level of mental connection and it's been too long since she's known what he was thinking.

He chuckles. Half his drink is gone. "Dr. Gyson made a pretty strange suggestion during our last session."

Eames had suspected as much, given the way he was looking at her when she picked him up; his mood had only begun to break when they were almost at the crime scene. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Think you can pretend you don't know me?"

She bites back her first truthful retort and nods, and feels the tips of his fingers ghost over the small of her back as he moves past her.

\--

An hour later, she really wants to know what Dr. Gyson's suggestion was. She's pretty sure it started with "pick up a pretty girl at a bar," and she isn't a girl anymore and she's having a bad hair day, but she'll let that go.

He came back, bought her a drink, asked her name. He asked her what she did. And she noticed how often he looked away, until she used one of his own tricks and tilted her head, craning her neck to gain eye contact, and he shook his head, chuckling. It was after his fourth drink that he'd asked if she wanted to get out of there.

And that's how she finds herself in the stairwell in his building, because the elevator's broken, her pumps in her hands, another two martinis in her. He's quick, and he opens the door for his floor with a flourish, motioning her through. She has a key to his place but she waits for him to key the door open anyway, then steps in.

It's clean, or at least as clean as a bachelor pad ever gets, though at least with him the clutter is stacks of medical reference texts and anything else he hasn't been able to find somewhere on the internet instead of stacks of Playboy and Maxim. He tosses his jacket over the back of the couch and she lets her heels fall to the floor, then turns back to him.

She can remember exactly how long it's been since they last made love. Then he had been gone, and then there was their reinstatement and the new captain and the unspoken knowledge that if they did anything to fuck this up they were out, and there had even been a week in there when Bobby hadn't wanted to touch her, had gone out of his way to put her coffee down on her desk so even their fingers didn't brush.

Eames doesn't realize she blames Gyson for it until she's blowing a thin stream of air between her lips, pushing her hair out of her face, wondering if this is just more of that "suggestion."

It's supposed to be better, isn't it? If he has to playact to get them to this point, she isn't sure she even wants it.

"She asked if I was in love with you." He makes a little disbelieving, scoffing noise at the end of it and his gaze is nowhere near hers.

Alex's eyebrows go up. She doesn't even have to ask who "she" is. "I would love to have been a fly on the wall during _that_ conversation."

Bobby's gaze flicks back up, shies away.

(It's been three years, six months, four days.)

"I told her that of course I wasn't."

"Of course." It comes out more brusque than she intended.

"I just feel like it isn't any of her business."

Alex glances up. "It's pretty much exactly her business."

"Yeah, and if I tell her about that then before I'm even back at the office after the session I'm reassigned."

Alex puts her purse down and takes a few steps toward him. "The mandated sessions are over, right?"

He shrugs. "We're still working."

"On what?"

He does that thing where he starts and stops what he's about to say a few times, then lets out a frustrated sigh and walks into the kitchen. She follows, almost noiseless on bare feet, and watches him slosh another few fingers of scotch into a highball glass and bolt it back.

She tugs his shirt out of his pants and runs her fingertips over the fabric at the small of his back. She would blame the alcohol but she still knows exactly where she is and what she's doing. "What are you working on?"

Another finger of scotch. "Making sure I stay a good productive cop for many more years to come," he says, and he spins the glass a little on the counter and the sound echoes in the quiet apartment.

"There was doubt?"

He lets out a snicker and his eyes are dark when he turns to her. "Why have you put up with me all this time?"

"I spent so long acquiring your taste that it would be a waste to throw it away."

He doesn't smile, but then she's only half joking.

"I always thought I had all the time in the world."

She is familiar with the feeling. Nathan's already in elementary school. Her husband has been gone for so long that it's hard to remember anything beyond the edges of the photographs, the anniversary dinners, the first night they made love, that last night when they closed the coffin over him.

"If we don't talk about it, it's like we do."

\--

It's like she knew it would end this way. She's wearing deep blue satin under the black shift dress, and when he slides the dress down her shoulders she catches it and tosses it over his dresser. He unclasps her bra one-handed and she works her way down his shirt.

She wishes she could forget everything between, and just keep who they were, who they are. Some small part of her has remained unbroken through all this, but it's going to take longer for him, and it hits her that maybe this isn't the best way, or maybe this is really the only way.

He smells the same as he did that first time, like scotch and aftershave, and she sees him that night again, at once arrogant and vulnerable. Tonight, for the past few months even, he's been quieter, like there's some decision he hasn't quite been able to make yet.

It feels like he's been drifting away from her for years.

They stopped talking even before they ended up in his bedroom, and when they kiss it burns. He picks her up and swings her onto the bed, and when she stands over him like this he looks like a supplicant, arms sliding around her to draw her closer, tilting his face back, and she runs her fingers through her hair as she leans down to kiss him. Then he pushes the blade of his hand between her thighs, shoving them apart, and slides one finger up inside her, groaning when he finds her wet.

She closes her eyes and sinks to her knees on the bed, her hips pushing against him in answer, and now she's the supplicant, now she's the one with her head tipped up like a prayer.

He's careful to leave his hickeys where they won't show in the gap of an unbuttoned collar or the absence of a sleeve, and when she draws her nails over him, hard, she leaves red welts up his back, leaves him gasping.

It feels like more than it used to be, although to get through the day and working with him she'd had to set it all aside, put it in a box and make herself forget that she knew the curve and breadth and taste of his cock, had to forget that he knew what she tasted like and the exact rhythm that could make her break, sobbing in pleasure under him, boneless, helpless, unable to do anything but shudder against his thrusts. It wasn't that it had ever been meaningless. It was all the time and all the baggage and Gyson—

He's feeling in his bedside table for a condom when she pushes herself up on her elbows, knee bent, legs sprawled lazily open for him, and when he returns to her he stops short, his gaze meeting hers.

"Back up," she says. "She asked if you were in love with me and of course you aren't. Because it's none of her business."

He nods.

"Because it's none of her business that you..."

She loses her nerve and glances away.

He tilts his head. "This isn't any of her business either," he says mildly.

"So everything is just a trap."

"Maybe not everything."

He grasps her and pulls her over with him, until she's straddling him, her hands on his shoulders.

"Why did she ask if you were in love with me."

She whispers it, taking the condom, stroking it deftly onto his cock.

"I don't know," he says, and she hears the mildest catch in his voice when she has her hands on him, exploring flesh that was once far more familiar. "Because she can't see a man and woman working together for ten years without complications developing."

"Complications."

Then she takes his cock and maneuvers him, angling him, and pushes her hips down so that the head of his cock is against her clit.

"Or maybe because I have been for years."

In surprise she shifts his angle and takes him halfway into her before she realizes she shouldn't, but by then it's too late, and she closes her eyes.

They need to talk about that.

His fingers press into the flesh of her ass, and then he finds her clit and her breath comes out in a rush as she takes his length. It's been different ever since she had Nathan, now the full length of his cock between her legs doesn't feel like it's on the point of splitting her in half, and she slides back up to thrust down onto him again.

 _Years._

How long has she been in love with him?

His thumb circles her clit and she lets out a low pleading groan, sliding her knees apart until her thighs are flush against his hips.

Then at some point he rolls over and cups her breasts under his large hands, rolling her nipples, and she wraps her legs around him, slipping her hand between them to find her clit. Whenever she sees him towering over a suspect she thinks of this, of his weight on her, of being entirely at his mercy.

He shivers over her and slows, and he's fully inside her when she comes, inner flesh pulsing against his cock, and he sighs. His eyes are open, glinting in the dark, and that's the last thing she sees before she closes her eyes and gives herself over to it.

It's been too long.

"How long have you known?"

She can see him mentally rewinding their conversation. "I don't know," he admits, but he doesn't sound agitated by it, and he doesn't ask the follow-up, doesn't ask her anything.

She runs her fingers through his hair, pulls him down to her for a kiss. "Me either," she whispers against his lips.

He pulls back and just gazes at her for a long time, and she doesn't look away.

"Get a drink with me next weekend."

She nods.

She thinks she'll like this therapy most of all.


End file.
